The resentment of the brides was already much diminished at the very moment when their parents, in mourning garb and with tears and lamentations, were attempting to arouse their states to action. Nor did they confine their complaints to their home towns, but thronged from every side to the house of Titus Tatius, king of the Sabines; and thither, too, came official embassies, for the name of Tatius was the greatest in all that country.
The men of Caenina, Crustumium, and Antemnae, were those who had had a share in the wrong. It seemed to them that Tatius and the Sabines were procrastinating, and without waiting for them these three tribes arranged for a joint campaign.
But even the Crustuminians and Antemnates moved too slowly to satisfy the burning anger of the Caeninenses, and accordingly that nation invaded alone the Roman territory. But while they were dispersed and engaged in pillage, Romulus appeared with his troops and taught them, by an easy victory, how ineffectual is anger without strength.
Their army he broke and routed, and pursued it as it fled; their king he killed in battle and despoiled; their city, once their leaderB.C. 753-717 was slain, he captured at the first assault.
He then led his victorious army back, and being not more splendid in his deeds than willing to display them, he arranged the spoils of the enemy's dead commander upon a fame, suitably fashioned for the purpose, and, carrying it himself, mounted the Capitol. Having there deposited his burden, by an oak which the shepherds held sacred, at the same time as he made his offering he marked out the limits of a temple to Jupiter, and bestowed a title upon him.
Jupiter Feretrius, he said, to thee I, victorious Romulus, myself a king, bring the panoply of a king, and dedicate a sacred precinct within the bounds which I have even now marked off in my mind, to be a seat for the spoils of honour which men shall bear hither in time to come, following my example, when they have slain kings and commanders of the enemy. This was the origin of the first temple that was consecrated in Rome.Jupiter Feretrius (etymology unknown) was the pure Italian Jupiter, whose worship was later overshadowed by the Etruscan god of the great temple on the Capitol. See Fowler, Fest. p. 229. It pleased Heaven, in the sequel, that while the founder's words should not be in vain, when he declared that men should bring spoils thither in the after time, yet the glory of that gift should not be staled by a multitude of partakers. Twice only since then, in all these years with their many wars, have the spoils of honour been won; so rarely have men had the good fortune to attain to that distinction.The other instances were the victories of Cossus over Tolumnius, king of Veii (iv. 20), and of Marcellus over Virdomarus, king of the Insubrian Gauls. Propertius tells the three stories in iv. 10.